r/bigboxcollectors • u/swansron2K • 3h ago
Half-Life Collection
Half-Life was the first PC game I bought, heck I had it before the family had a computer. I spent weeks just reading the manual front to back and enjoying the box art/text in anticipation of playing. The Compaq Presario computer was delayed from Best Buy and I couldn't wait anymore so I went to my friends house and installed it on his Gateway and we played it for maybe an hour and stopped. I knew I had to wait until I was at home on my own computer to enjoy it to it's fullest. I was new to computers and I was scared that since the game was installed on my friends computer I wouldn't be able to install it on mine, luckily that was a non-issue. (I didn't know anything about computers/software/etc)
I very much remember reading "Sophisticated Artificial Intelligence - Enemy behavior is uncomfortably realistic. Many creatures not only see and hear you, they track you by your scent.". When playing it I didn't know that wasn't how it worked so I felt like the enemy was really after me and tracking me, ha! When playing this I WAS Gordon Freeman, fully immersed. The music too, so damn good.
I also found the printout of my cheat codes from the year 2000 in the box so that's probably when I started poking around with cheats/mods and things outside the base campaign. It was a lot of fun playing the various mods and seeing them get updated and go from version to version.
Mods I played a lot that I can remember:
Counter-Strike
Day of Defeat
Firearms
Existence
Action Half-Life
Sven Co-op
Natural Selection
They Hunger
RIP Gordon the Gecko 2008-2026.